4 July 2024 : General Election - The Results

[steve]

The rise of a despot like trump was always a possibility and it's a reason why we should never have left the European union.

Faced with a fascist isolationist US and a expanding dictatorship China I know which of the three economic super powers I'd want to be associated with.

But here we are brexity no mates instead.

[Danny]

Nov 6, 2024 8:12:32 GMT colin said:

"Farmers are plotting a nationwide strike this month to disrupt the food supply system in protest against a proposed 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms."

Times

I am still puzzled, just how many farmers ever had any intention of leaving their whole estate to one child who would continue farming?

I wonder if the real problem here is that farmers who have no heirs at all who could take on the business (ie probably most of them) do not want to move off their farms and die in a bungalow on a housing estate. So they refuse to sell up before they die and take measures such as giving the money away to their kids (the ones who dont fancy farming, thank you) which would avoid paying any tax at all. They feel hard done by because they either have to move out early or pay the tax.

Its kinda the only thing which makes sense.

[Danny]

Nov 6, 2024 11:29:53 GMT steve said:

The rise of a despot like trump was always a possibility and it's a reason why we should never have left the European union.

Faced with a fascist isolationist US and a expanding dictatorship China I know which of the three economic super powers I'd want to be associated with.

But here we are brexity no mates instead.

So you are an ex banker who fancies being PM. How to go about it? Start a party: needs a cause, got it Brexit. Push it through, conservatives then steal your cause to prevent you getting MPs. Brexit goes pear shaped, obvious it would. Conservatives disgraced, you say its their fault for bad implementation. You expand your party and get some MPs. Now need to attack the other party too, and thats coming along. Get those brexiteers back onboard saying no one can do it right except you. Attack the big issue of uncontrolled immigration; bam, bam, fists landing because both parties want immigration. To fix the Uk economy mainstream need to rejoin the EU. If they do, bam, bam, attack them for reneging on Brexit.  Its obvious trickle down economics doesnt work. Housing is a rigged market intended to extract money from the poor and hand it to the rich. dbe a useful cause, but the total failure of mainstream to do anything is just waiting to be made use of. Give it this parliament for labour to fail and then see where best to attack them, while con will likely still be in complete disgrace.  Make friends wirh president of the US who can faff around the UK government to make them look incompetent.

[colin]

Nov 6, 2024 12:17:41 GMT Danny said:

Nov 6, 2024 8:12:32 GMT colin said:

"Farmers are plotting a nationwide strike this month to disrupt the food supply system in protest against a proposed 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms."

Times

I am still puzzled, just how many farmers ever had any intention of leaving their whole estate to one child who would continue farming?

I wonder if the real problem here is that farmers who have no heirs at all who could take on the business (ie probably most of them) do not want to move off their farms and die in a bungalow on a housing estate. So they refuse to sell up before they die and take measures such as giving the money away to their kids (the ones who dont fancy farming, thank you) which would avoid paying any tax at all. They feel hard done by because they either have to move out early or pay the tax.

Its kinda the only thing which makes sense.

Maybe the Treasury have got it wrong. ? Maybe they misunderstood the effects in the same way that they misunderstood the effects of lowering the E'ER NIC threshold on part-time employment. ?



www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/04/nfu-rejects-treasury-claim-that-72-of-farms-wont-pay-inheritance-tax

[steve]

Badenoch's first outing at PMQ's rather got lost in the shuffle of American carnage.
But it was shall we say not optimal.

Badenoch started with two questions relating to Lammy calling trump a neo Nazi , which frankly seems fair comment given that it's also the opinion of most of those who worked with him.
A tad bizarre also to come out in favour of the fascist rapist given that 82% of those polled in the UK including a large majority of Tories would have preferred Harris to win.
She then accused Starmer of engaging in student politics with pre prepared answers, which might have  had a tad more impact had she not been engaging in student politics with pre prepared questions .


Moving on Badenoch decided to accuse Rachel Reeves of making no reference to defence spending in her budget a slight problem with this line as Reeves did reference defence spending including a promise of an extra £2.5 billion.


It's probably fortunate for Kemi that more significant things were happening not in parliament.

Ed Davey was, as is becoming a habit, both thoughtful and constructive in his questions.

[steve]

No doubt we will have weasel words from the Tories and sadly I suspect from the Labour government following the election of a criminal rapist lunatic as president of the United States.

But this is what standing up for democratic principles sounds like.

"This is a very dark day.

I’m sure you’re very worried about what Donald Trump’s election will mean – for the future of the world, and for the values we all hold dear. I’m worried too.

But you have the power to do something about it. Together, our party will stand up to Donald Trump’s nasty, divisive politics and defend our values of decency, compassion and equality – at home and around the world.

So do something today: ask five friends to join the Liberal Democrats.

Send them this link and tell them they can be part of the liberal, progressive and internationalist movement the world needs now more than ever:

www.libdems.org.uk/join

Because the next President of the United States is a dangerous demagogue, who actively undermines the rule of law, human rights, international trade, climate action, global security… the list goes on.

Millions of Americans – especially women and minorities – will be incredibly fearful about what comes next. We stand with them.

Families across the UK will also be worrying about the damage Trump will do to our economy and our national security, given his record of starting trade wars, undermining NATO and emboldening tyrants like Putin.

That makes fixing the UK’s broken relationship with the EU even more urgent than it already was. We must strengthen trade and defence cooperation across Europe to help protect ourselves from the damage Trump will do. And only the Liberal Democrats are fighting to do that.

This is not the result any of us wanted to see. And I know it’ll take a while to come to terms with it. But I also know we won’t let that stop us from standing up proudly for our liberal values.

Best wishes at a very difficult time,

Ed Davey MP
Leader of the Liberal Democrat party"

[mercian]

Nov 6, 2024 9:29:17 GMT Rafwan said:

mercian

If I concede on the flimflammy thing, will you agree that making a factual claim without being able to substantiate it is bad practice?

Perhaps, but it's commonly done on here, including by you in stating with no evidence that I invented the whole thing.

[Rafwan]

Oh well, if you are going to make a fuss about it …!

Anyway, I was only trying to do you a favour. A few days ago you said you wanted to find something else to piss me off. Thought I would help you out and that you would be happy!! No pleasing some people!!

[Danny]

Just listened to 'moral maze' which was about the merits of private eduction. A number of the panelists seemed to be rather venomously opposed to the whole concept of private education, considering it to be wholly unfair some kids got an advantage simply because their parents could afford to pay for it.

I thought this rather extraordinary, because we live in a society which is based upon the idea of amassing money which you can then freely exchange for material goods you want, or services, or personal advantage. The panel seemed to think an exception should be made, banning parents from buying a better education by placing their kids in private schools. When asked how far this should go, they seemed to think it was ok to still get eg private tuition, just so long as your kids were forced to attend the local, failing, state school.

One of the guests, an education expert, opined that the biggest problem in Uk education is not private schools, but the very uneven performance of different state schools. Which of course if you couple it with rich people still being allowed to choose where they live, always enables them to move to live near a good rather than bad state school. The real problem then was those schools adjacent to clusters of poor people. Which not only had unmotivated kids, but also teachers refuse to work there. Which didnt then explain the hatred of some panelists for the concept of private education.

There were some stats on how kids from private schools get better exam results and better jobs thereafter. But the proposed solution to this was persistently to close those schools, or tax them out of existence, so as to create equality of opportunity. Wheras, surely, when there exists a free market in some service which has ascertained a price level for an acceptable service quality, maybe what should be happening is the state should take note of the cost of what the free market considers a good education, and then fund state schools at that same level. Logically then, this would optimise the education of the kids in state schools. This would require appoximately doubling the money spent on state schools.

But... rather than actually optimising the education of the nations kids, what we seem to want to do is give them a sub standard education, and then make sure no one is allowed to get a better one.

I'm totally unclear how that helps UK plc.

[Danny]

Nov 4, 2024 12:32:01 GMT alec said:

steve - sometimes throwing money and support at an industry doesn't end up helping them. This is particularly true in farming, where there is a physical and very hard limit to the critical resource, land.

One former chief economist of the NFU - not an anti agriculture warrior - came to the conclusion that farm subsidies had made farmers poorer, because of the huge uplift in the price of land they caused, arguing that government needed to withdraw support to make farming more viable.

I'd like to see more done to correct the market imbalance between supermarkets & producers, market corrections like that, rather than pump up the price of land through cash incentives. That's how we can help farmers.

Logically then land needs to be taxed much more heavily on transfer, so as to force sales and make more available to newcomers.

[pjw1961]

Nov 6, 2024 16:57:26 GMT steve said:

No doubt we will have weasel words from the Tories and sadly I suspect from the Labour government following the election of a criminal rapist lunatic as president of the United States.

But this is what standing up for democratic principles sounds like.

Sorry steve but that is really dumb. The British government doesn't get to choose who foreign leaders are and it has to try to represent the interests of the whole British people, economy, national security etc. Government representatives can't just slag off leaders they don't much like. Davey can say this stuff because he is not in government. If he was, he wouldn't. 

[steve]

pjw1961
The rapist lunatic will be president and if you expect the remotest degree of self control by him or his far right fascist team in relation to other countries leaders, excluding of course his favoured dictators, you are being incredibly naive.

This is a different world we have a dangerous isolationist about to take charge whose about to ride a coach and horses through diplomacy, civil rights our international security and climate change control , for his own self aggrandizement.
He's not going to give a shit about protocol.
The U.K. government has had no difficulty calling out war criminal Putin for what he is. There's unlikely to be a lot to choose between them.

There's nothing going to be achieved by denying what our political leaders are going to be dealing with.

The U.S. won't just be an unreliable ally a Trump government is fundamentally opposed to any principles of democracy and will be untrustworthy in any negotiations.

[lens]

Nov 6, 2024 16:57:26 GMT steve said:

No doubt we will have weasel words from the Tories and sadly I suspect from the Labour government following the election of a criminal rapist lunatic as president of the United States.

But this is what standing up for democratic principles sounds like.

"This is a very dark day.

I’m sure you’re very worried about what Donald Trump’s election will mean – for the future of the world, and for the values we all hold dear. I’m worried too.

But you have the power to do something about it. Together, our party will stand up to Donald Trump’s nasty, divisive politics and defend our values of decency, compassion and equality – at home and around the world.

So do something today: ask five friends to join the Liberal Democrats.

Send them this link and tell them they can be part of the liberal, progressive and internationalist movement the world needs now more than ever:

www.libdems.org.uk/join

Because the next President of the United States is a dangerous demagogue, who actively undermines the rule of law, human rights, international trade, climate action, global security… the list goes on.

Millions of Americans – especially women and minorities – will be incredibly fearful about what comes next. We stand with them.

Families across the UK will also be worrying about the damage Trump will do to our economy and our national security, given his record of starting trade wars, undermining NATO and emboldening tyrants like Putin.

That makes fixing the UK’s broken relationship with the EU even more urgent than it already was. We must strengthen trade and defence cooperation across Europe to help protect ourselves from the damage Trump will do. And only the Liberal Democrats are fighting to do that.

This is not the result any of us wanted to see. And I know it’ll take a while to come to terms with it. But I also know we won’t let that stop us from standing up proudly for our liberal values.

Best wishes at a very difficult time,

Ed Davey MP
Leader of the Liberal Democrat party"

steve - Like it or not (and I'll be quite clear - I don't) but Donald Trump was fairly and decisively elected by US voters to be president, and again (like it or not) that is what he will be for the next four years. For the UK government, the choice is to either grit teeth and work with him to the country's (world's, for that matter) advantage as well as possible - or to take a moral high ground position, and damn the consequences.

My own opinion is that the sensible option is the first one. Trump is known to have a vindictive streak and not react well to slights against him (even if they may be true and deserved) and for a UK politician to publicly express sentiments such as in bold above is at best unwise. At worst likely to be entirely counterproductive, and possibly produce an end result worse than may be wished for.

If you have put that up in an attempt to convince anyone to support the Lib Dems, then at least for me it has the opposite effect. Just makes me feel Ed Davey is more suited to debating in a student politics environment than to be given any position of real power.

[alec]

steve - more on farm IHT. Financial expert on farming today this morning confirming that for a couple in a formal business partnership (eg both own the farm) the IHT limit would be £3m, with any debts set against that. If they have any sense, make the children part of the partnership, so further increasing the amount. Any large investment plans, do before the older pone dies, insure against the rest.

The NFU is talking shite about a £1m threshold and scaring farmers. This really isn't an issue, except for those who have ploughed cash into farms to avoid tax. It will benefit farmers overall, by pushing the Dysons out of the market and making farmland a little more affordable.

[steve]

"The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe; for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them."

[Danny]

Nov 6, 2024 23:43:50 GMT steve said:

pjw1961
The rapist lunatic will be president

It think thats a teeny bit strong. Plenty of worse world leaders.

and if you expect the remotest degree of self control by him or his far right fascist team in relation to other countries leaders, excluding of course his favoured dictators, you are being incredibly naive.

Lucky we have his mate Farage then...

This is a different world...

Possibly yes. But the reason why will be that the balance of advantage with free trade has slipped away from the USA.

The U.K. government has had no difficulty calling out war criminal Putin for what he is.

I'm sorry, but that is really over the top. I am not aware Putin has ever been accused of rape, etc, etc, but based on performance he is a far more dangerous foreign leader.

The U.S. won't just be an unreliable ally a Trump government is fundamentally opposed to any principles of democracy and will be untrustworthy in any negotiations.

I dont believe thats true. I mean, the US in its foreign policy has never favoured democracy particularly, whatever will get the job done. Its never been a reliable ally for britain in the sense its on our side, simply we have often had mutual goals. But its government IS bound by democratic principles which constrain what it can do. The last Trump administration was not especially bad or especially good.

The blame game for the democrats is now starting to concentrate on Biden, for hanging on to power. But he was chosen by the party when he was already ancient! The dems in the USA were possibly in the same position labour could be in in 4 years, a middling performance in office but hardly spectacular to encourage disinterested voters to support them.

[steve]

alec

I mean what would the National Farmer's Union know about the concerns of farmers!

This is what was said

The chancellor last week claimed that 72% of farms would be unaffected. The NFU argues that cash-poor, medium-sized family farms will be unaffordably hit if the rate remains at £1m, and pointed to Defra figures, which it said indicated that the true percentage of farms affected by the APR changes will be 66%.

The Treasury’s assumption was based on former claims for APR but many assets on farmland were claimed for under a separate inheritance tax relief scheme – BPR, according to the union, and the new regime joins these schemes together. The NFU said that the Treasury has therefore undervalued many of the UK’s farms and the Defra data is more accurate. This data was worked out recently when farms were applying for subsidy after the UK left the EU farm payments system and they had to register their value and size with Defra.

Bradshaw said the Treasury and Defra agreed in the meeting to go away and come up with the “true figure”.

Bradshaw said farmers were furious after Reed promised before the budget that there would be no changes to APR, so businesses were unable to prepare for the shock.


He told journalists on Monday: “They do not understand the immediate impacts this having to intergenerational farms. Some very, very concerned successful businesses have a parent involved who is in their 80s but the person running the farm is in their 50s. The assets are still in the ownership of the older family member. We have seen some in ill health who will not live seven years to utilise the gifting rules. It is unbelievable the pressure they are putting on the industry. To make this change now, to rip the rug out from under the farming industry, I don’t see how they can justify it.”


Now they may be wrong I don't know enough about the situation and I strongly suspect that you don't either Alec.
But what they aren't doing is " talking shite"

[moby]

There is hope:-
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/07/no-10-believes-it-has-done-its-homework-for-a-trump-presidency

[steve]

Governor Gavin Newsom of California responding to the election.


"Vice President Kamala Harris set out to fight to defend our fundamental freedoms and build a country that works for everyone. She stood up for working families, decency, and opportunity. Though this is not the outcome we wanted, our fight for freedom and opportunity endures.

California will seek to work with the incoming president — but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.

Federalism is the cornerstone of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America.”

[Danny]

Nov 7, 2024 6:10:42 GMT alec said:

steve - more on farm IHT. Financial expert on farming today this morning confirming that for a couple in a formal business partnership (eg both own the farm) the IHT limit would be £3m, with any debts set against that. If they have any sense, make the children part of the partnership, so further increasing the amount. Any large investment plans, do before the older pone dies, insure against the rest.

The NFU is talking shite about a £1m threshold and scaring farmers. This really isn't an issue, except for those who have ploughed cash into farms to avoid tax. It will benefit farmers overall, by pushing the Dysons out of the market and making farmland a little more affordable.

Inheritance tax is purely optional, the only people who have to pay it are those who die early. Its a rich man's charter, if you want to retain wealth within the family and pay no tax. All you have to do is pass on wealth 7 years before you die. Its totally not difficult if what you really want to do is keep it in the family. The only way it doesnt work is if you want to retain control until the day you die.

And I still havnt heard just what proportion of farmers are in the position they have one child only who also wants to continue running the farm, so they are actually in the position to do pass it on. If you have no kids, obviously they cannot inherit and if you have more than one, who is going to disinherit the others so just one can inherit everything? What is being talked about is a farm too small to be split to pay death duties, never mind too small to allow halving or whatever to divide the inheritance fairly.  The tax is only 20% even above the free bands.

If we introduced a tax which genuinely taxed large estates at 20% when they are passed on it would raise a massive amount of money.  Its also a tax very hard to avoid, you cannot take your land abroad to evade the tax.

[Danny]

Nov 7, 2024 6:21:51 GMT steve said:

"The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe; for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them."

People in glass houses shouldnt throw stones?

[steve]

moby

I spent 7 years trying to put in plans to assist my dementing mother and to compensate for her behaviour we thought on numerous occasions that we had it right.
But at the end of the day she was still demented.

Trump will be trump whatever thoughts pass through his head other than self gratification will be fleeting it's like saying we have plans put in place to negotiate with a Tsunami.

[steve]

Danny
Among the plethora of total cobblers you've been posting recently

"Inheritance tax is purely optional, the only people who have to pay it are those who die early. "

Is among the best.

The dead don't pay taxes whatever time they die.

[Danny]

Nov 7, 2024 6:46:51 GMT steve said:

He told journalists on Monday: “They do not understand the immediate impacts this having to intergenerational farms. Some very, very concerned successful businesses have a parent involved who is in their 80s but the person running the farm is in their 50s. The assets are still in the ownership of the older family member. We have seen some in ill health who will not live seven years to utilise the gifting rules. It is unbelievable the pressure they are putting on the industry. To make this change now, to rip the rug out from under the farming industry, I don’t see how they can justify it.”

In general the discount for gifting starts to kick in at 3 or 4 years, you get some rebate before the full 7 years. 'The Archers' sometimes talk about passing on the family farm and have plot lines about who owns what share, but really for decades it has had common currency of the old generation retiring and handing over ownership to those who actually want to keep farming. If you really have several children, then handing over to the chosen successor in a staged way well ahead of a death, which allows them to buy out the other children, is about the only way you could do it.  Tax totally isnt the issue rather than family redistribution.

As to ripping out rugs from under farmers...the national interest is in food being grown, not in who is doing the growing. Its largely irrelevant who owns it. Having said that, the Duke of Buccleuch owns 280,000 acres. No inheritance tax being paid there, I'm sure. Duchy of Cornwall, 135,000 acres. Duke of Atholl, 145,000 acres. Duke of Westmnster 140,000 acres. Aristocrats still own around 1/3 of all land. There IS a real question whether these people should be allowed to continue owning this wealth just because their ancestors were given it for some historical reason. And the way to gradually relieve them of it would be through effective taxation on transfer. The economic argument surely would be higher taxes on land than other assets, not lower, to ensure it gets redistributed. More recently apparently, Anders Holch Povlsen a Danish businessman is the largest modern private land owner in the UK at 218,000 acres. Much of these large land holdings may well be leased to smaller farmers with varying degrees of security which may also entitle them to pass on tenancies rather than ownership. www.fwi.co.uk/business/markets-and-trends/land-markets/who-owns-britains-farmland

[Danny]

Nov 7, 2024 7:17:04 GMT steve said:

Danny
Among the plethora of total cobblers you've been posting recently

"Inheritance tax is purely optional, the only people who have to pay it are those who die early. "

Is among the best.

The dead don't pay taxes whatever time they die.

I linked a legal reference from the 70s saying exactly this. Its very well established its an optional tax because all you have ever had to do (except it seems for a brief period in the 70s) is give it away 7 years before you die, and then you pay nothing. The analogy would be that I could avoid income tax by giving all my income to someone else. Who then could avoid their own income tax, by giving their income to me. Thats crazy.

Try a maybe better example. Suppose we make it a rule that if you murder someone, then if no one catches you within 7 years, you can no longer be tried, you are legally exhonerated? And if you stay free for 4 years, you will get a reduced sentence. Rolf Harris should not have been prosecuted because it was too long ago? (yep, I do know this already applies for certain minor crimes, but tax on billions of pounds is not minor)

The Uk made a decision years ago not to tax the wealthy when they passed on that wealth to the next generation. Is that truly fair? Above we have some people seriously attacking private schools because they give an unfair advantage to the children of the rich. And yet its perfectly fine those rich can pass on all their wealth and position directly to those kids, whatever they achieved educationally. The education debate misses the point those kids dont even need an education, they are guaranteed to be wealthy anyway.

[steve]

Governor Gavin Newsom of California responding to the election.

"Vice President Kamala Harris set out to fight to defend our fundamental freedoms and build a country that works for everyone. She stood up for working families, decency, and opportunity. Though this is not the outcome we wanted, our fight for freedom and opportunity endures.

California will seek to work with the incoming president — but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.

Federalism is the cornerstone of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America.”

Look forward to visiting the world's fifth largest economy the State of California.

[jib]

Nov 7, 2024 8:47:10 GMT steve said:

Governor Gavin Newsom of California responding to the election.

"Vice President Kamala Harris set out to fight to defend our fundamental freedoms and build a country that works for everyone. She stood up for working families, decency, and opportunity. Though this is not the outcome we wanted, our fight for freedom and opportunity endures.

California will seek to work with the incoming president — but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.

Federalism is the cornerstone of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America.”

Look forward to visiting the world's fifth largest economy the State of California.

Stick the coast. They're all Trump supporters up in the hills, wouldn't want you to open your gob and get into bother.

[richardstamper]

Nov 6, 2024 21:15:46 GMT Danny said:

Just listened to 'moral maze' which was about the merits of private eduction. A number of the panelists seemed to be rather venomously opposed to the whole concept of private education, considering it to be wholly unfair some kids got an advantage simply because their parents could afford to pay for it.

I thought this rather extraordinary, because we live in a society which is based upon the idea of amassing money which you can then freely exchange for material goods you want, or services, or personal advantage. The panel seemed to think an exception should be made, banning parents from buying a better education by placing their kids in private schools. When asked how far this should go, they seemed to think it was ok to still get eg private tuition, just so long as your kids were forced to attend the local, failing, state school.

One of the guests, an education expert, opined that the biggest problem in Uk education is not private schools, but the very uneven performance of different state schools. Which of course if you couple it with rich people still being allowed to choose where they live, always enables them to move to live near a good rather than bad state school. The real problem then was those schools adjacent to clusters of poor people. Which not only had unmotivated kids, but also teachers refuse to work there. Which didnt then explain the hatred of some panelists for the concept of private education.

There were some stats on how kids from private schools get better exam results and better jobs thereafter. But the proposed solution to this was persistently to close those schools, or tax them out of existence, so as to create equality of opportunity. Wheras, surely, when there exists a free market in some service which has ascertained a price level for an acceptable service quality, maybe what should be happening is the state should take note of the cost of what the free market considers a good education, and then fund state schools at that same level. Logically then, this would optimise the education of the kids in state schools. This would require appoximately doubling the money spent on state schools.

But... rather than actually optimising the education of the nations kids, what we seem to want to do is give them a sub standard education, and then make sure no one is allowed to get a better one.

I'm totally unclear how that helps UK plc.

The performance of UK plc is pretty much exactly what one would expect for an entity disproportionately led by well-coached mediocrities with an inflated sense of their abilities and competence, principally because their parents could afford the polishing and coaching to get them into the elite universities and with personal connections to give them easier access to key professions and opportunities.  Making it more difficult for arrogant, self-regarding duffers to end up in positions of power and influence would be a good move, I'd have thought.

[leftieliberal]

Mike Amesbury charged with common assault. Perhaps steve can advise us on the likelihood of a by-election in Runcorn and Helsby. What is the normal range of sentences for common assault?

[Danny]

Nov 7, 2024 11:57:50 GMT richardstamper said:

The performance of UK plc is pretty much exactly what one would expect for an entity disproportionately led by well-coached mediocrities with an inflated sense of their abilities and competence, principally because their parents could afford the polishing and coaching to get them into the elite universities and with personal connections to give them easier access to key professions and opportunities.  Making it more difficult for arrogant, self-regarding duffers to end up in positions of power and influence would be a good move, I'd have thought.

Well then, what you need to do is attack the source of power of the ruling elite, which is their wealth. Education is not essential to continuation of an elite group. In fact it could be dangerous, because it allows social climbers with a bit of money an entry into the rulers world, lets their kids break into it. So I can see why those elites would prefer to abolish the sorts of schools where this might possibly happen. Got rid of most of the grammars long ago, which had increasingly been sending people  from ordinary backgrounds into top spots.